Tag Archives: Road trip

Our family decided to not be home this Christmas, and the Edwards Xmas Road Trip was created. We left home December 22 and headed south. We spent several days in Nashville & New Orleans, then headed for the Florida Keys. Arrived in Key West on December 29, where we met up with our best friends with whom we had rented a beautiful house right in the heart of downtown. Parked our vehicles and there they sat for almost a week. We wandered, ate & drank really well, napped and in general, thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. Just click the images below to enlarge.

We live to travel. Miss-Know-It-All has determined that she needs to have a successful profession so that she can afford her travel addiction. Road trips are in our blood. Although a now well-seasoned air traveller, Mr. CFO grew up taking all family vacations via wheels. I have memories of coming home from school on a Friday and my parents telling me to pack because we were headed to New York for the weekend. I cut my teeth on road maps, learning to read them as my uncle, grandmother and I headed to New Orleans, even though I had just come back from there with my parents!

The French Quarter is one of my favourite places in the world. From the beautiful architecture to the sumptuous food, the music, the art, the people — I love it all. There are many places I will go to and never visit again, but the French Quarter is not one of them.

Key West was the party place, full of colour, seafood and key lime pie!

Alas, it is always great to come home to familiar surroundings. There really is nothing better than sleeping in your own bed. As for the rest of the house, the cat, lizard and fish survived during our absence, but sadly, the same can not be said for the quails.

Like this:

We are experiencing the hottest summer in Ontario in forever, and what do we do? We head south — as in South Carolina. But first a detour to New Jersey. Why you say? Well, to the south because it’s hot AND there is ocean; we will get to spend time with our favourite people in the whole world, and when we get there the hardest decisions we are making are:

1. “Ready for a drink?”

2. “Should we have seafood again tonight?”

The above scene is the view we had for a glorious week. So that’s the reason I have been so lax in the blogging department.

The answer to the second why is a little harder for those who don’t know me. Here’s a picture of why we went to the Jersey Shores:

And yes, it was Friday. That’s The Juicer with a drumstick and Miss Know-It-All. It was worth the unforeseen traffic jams, the AC quitting on us and waking up the next morning and realizing our little detour was not so little.

So as I frolicked in the ocean, and ate well, I noticed somethings…

When did this happen:

1.One day I decided to check my mail on my iPhone. Whoa! What has happened to the screen ? It’s fuzzy. Oh wait. If I just move it out a little ways everything is clear. Huh. The next thing I know, Mr CFO and I are picking out the generic 3-pack of reading glasses at Costco.
2. When did my body morph into my mothers’!
3. Why do I keep referring to people in their twenties as, “Those 12 year olds.”?
4. When did I start relying on my eleven year old for sound electronic advice?
5. Back fat. WTF?!

But at the same time:

6. I get to have the most wonderful conversations with my teenage daughter about life, while other moms are pulling out their hair over theirs.
7. As a family, we did a 11 hour road trip to go see a rock ‘n roll band playing at a club I had been to almost 20 years before on my own solo road trip.
8. My kids are almost my height and I still get PDAs from them!
9. My family are my number one fans and supporters.

These are the strange days of my life. It’s whipping by all too quickly, and I realize there is still so much to learn about, see and experience — but with thoughtfulness and purpose, not with the haste of marking things off a checklist.

When we are quick to complain about the one thing going wrong or hiccup in the road, we need to stop and reconsider how many things went right in the day to get us to that point. Since my kids were babies, I have been mindful not to use the phrase, “I can hardly wait”, because that time is always here before you know it and you can’t go back.